L.A. Board of Supervisors Second District Race

For the first time in 16 years, the 2-million-person fiefdom known as Los Angeles County’s 2nd District is up for grabs with the retirement of Supervisor Yvonne Burke. The winner of the seat on the powerful five-member county Board of Supervisors will have a say over a $22.3 billion budget that is larger than that of several states, and more than 100,000 government employees.

The candidates, Los Angeles City Councilman Bernard Parks and state Senator Mark Ridley-Thomas, are embroiled in a nasty race. But more than personal enmity, the fight between Parks and Ridley-Thomas, both black Democrats, is remarkable for the third major entity playing a role: unions long desirous of controlling the Board of Supervisors, which has the power to grant government-employee raises and decides on huge construction and other contracts that benefit labor.

“The labor movement has come to the conclusion that they can no longer be item number two for Democrats” who hold office, says UC Santa Barbara labor expert Nelson Lichtenstein. “Democrats who say ‘I am a friend of labor’ are not good enough. They [the unions] need warriors.”

Flooded with more than $4.5 million in record-breaking donations from national and local unions, Ridley-Thomas is taking on the better-known former Los Angeles police chief, Parks. Ridley-Thomas beat Parks by five percentage points in the June primary, and his millions in union money has made Parks look like a pauper.

But Ridley-Thomas has been weakened by the antics of a labor chieftain friend of his, Tyrone Freeman, who stepped down from the SEIU Local 6434 in August after being accused of lavishly spending union dues and giving cushy contracts to his wife’s firm.

Until the widening scandal that has now engulfed Freeman’s understudy, Rickman Jackson, Ridley-Thomas’ main problem in beating Parks might have been his habit of public pomposity, which makes Parks, who can be stiff, seem almost laid-back by comparison. But Parks failed to use Ridley-Thomas’ SEIU links to his advantage, instead scrambling for voter attention by trying to make headlines on minor issues that seemed to backfire on him.

Meanwhile, the campaigns have only modestly addressed the 2nd District’s profound issues: the closure of King/Drew hospital; massive foreclosure rates among low-income families who put zero down on homes they couldn’t afford; a 34 percent homeless rate; one of the biggest populations of foster youth in America; and black and Latino gangs that terrorize neighborhoods from Carson to Culver City.

Parks’ campaign manager, his son Bernard Parks Jr., says Ridley-Thomas’ own campaign has been dwarfed — in effect superseded — by the big labor campaign that operates separately, to the point that Ridley-Thomas needn’t run one at all. “Mark could take a vacation,” says Parks Jr. “This campaign is about Parks running against labor. I’ve never seen such an insignificant candidate [as Ridley-Thomas]. Ever.”

Outgoing Supervisor Yvonne Burke dropped a bombshell, telling L.A. Weekly that the accused SEIU union honcho has bragged of hand-picking Ridley-Thomas for the post. She says Freeman told her he had “recruited” Ridley-Thomas to run for the seat she is vacating.

But Ridley-Thomas has sought to sidestep questions about his friendship with Freeman. After a brief opening ceremony for his suburban Carson headquarters, on the same day that Sarah Palin appeared at the nearby Home Depot center, Ridley-Thomas told L.A.Weekly, “In this country, you are innocent till proven guilty,” adding, “I’m not going to do what Parks did and throw him [Freeman] under the bus.”

 
The 800,000-member Los Angeles County Federation of Labor and the scandal-laden Service Employees International Union are among Ridley-Thomas’ biggest supporters, with other unions joining them to pour a stunning $4.5 million into his campaign and into lavishly funded independent expenditure committees.

Ridley-Thomas’ allies say he isn’t owned by unions and just wants to do right by union families. “Mark Ridley-Thomas will be sympathetic to protecting the middle-class jobs, but it is wrong to say that he will be in anyone’s pocket,” says Madeline Janis, executive director of the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, a union-oriented group that promotes green ideas and helps working families. (She stresses she is not speaking for the group in backing Ridley-Thomas.)

Still, with only about10 to 15 percent of South L.A. and Los Angeles County adults actually belonging to a union, and county supervisors expected to represent all residents, not just union households, the eyebrow-raising level of labor money behind Ridley-Thomas has set off recrimination and debate, particularly in the black community.

Black commentator and 2nd District resident Earl Ofari Hutchinson flatly states that unions are “buying the election” by pouring in overwhelming amounts. Even before corruption allegations surfaced against Freeman, he says, “The money was already tainted, in that sense.”

Maria Elena Durazo, executive secretary-treasurer of the county labor federation, twice sidestepped the SEIU corruption allegations when pressed by the Weekly, and SEIU did not call back. But as reported first by Los Angeles Times reporter Paul Pringle, Freeman allegedly misspent more than $400,000 between 2006 and 2007, including nearly $10,000 on dubious “lodging” at the swanky Grand Havana Room cigar club in Beverly Hills and $219,000 that went to a video production firm run by Freeman’s wife. In mid-August, the U.S. Department of Labor began scrutinizing how Freeman was elected to head the local in the first place, and soon after that, Freeman stepped down.